Rob Everett said he applied for unemployment about 19 years ago and got it within a couple of weeks. Things have changed in Alabama, however, which now lags the nation in doling out funds to the unemployed.
In fact, Alabama is still demanding people around the state pay back money handed out during the early stages of the pandemic. And appeals about any of this can go unanswered for years.
Everett was laid off from his job in sales at Sony in December. He hasn’t gotten help and doesn’t know when he will.
“This is something paid by the employers with the insurance,” he said, “so it’s like, I don’t quite understand why there seems to be no sense of urgency from the state to do anything about it.”
The problems date back several years, when the system buckled under the pandemic. It’s never worked well again. While struggling to pay people in need of support, Alabama today continues to review old payments and demand people pay back money given out during lockdown.
In 2022, Gov. Kay Ivey even chastised the Labor Department for demanding repayments. But the appeals continue, the legal challenges by nonprofits drag out and Alabama’s unemployment fiasco has even made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Alabama caps the state’s unemployment benefit at just $275 a week. Still, Everett said that amount could help his family a lot. Everett lives in Leeds, just outside Birmingham, with his wife and two kids. He said he supports his family because his wife cannot work
Everett said his job at Sony paid about $100,000 and the jobs he can find to apply to now pay less than half that much. The family has some savings, but that will run out.
“You don’t want your kids panicking and realizing the stress, but I mean it’s like every time something comes up, ‘I need this for school, or I need this for this.’ And it’s like you’re just doing the math in your head and you’re like, wow, that’s a week. That just costs us a week of how much time we have left off of our savings.”
Other Alabamians recently out of work told AL.com that when they applied for unemployment, it took months for the department to do the necessary verifications with their employers –- meaning the money arrived too late.
Meanwhile, just 10% of unemployed Alabamians are receiving benefits, according to federal data analyzed by the nonprofit Century Foundation. That puts Alabama second to last in the nation, following North Carolina. At the other end of the spectrum, 57% of unemployed New Jersey residents were getting benefits last year.
And there is no easy way to argue with Alabama. As of last year, the wait to question a decision by the Alabama Department of Labor was the longest in the nation, according to an analysis of federal data by Century Foundation. On average, it takes Alabama 685 days to hear an appeal.
Alabama still wants its money back
Greg Hagan, a pastor in Foley, recalls the day he got 13 letters from Alabama. Each asked for something different, from doctor’s notes to financial records. They arrived after he appealed the state’s demand to pay back $1,800 in unemployment.
The Hagans’ battle, like thousands more in Alabama, has dragged on for years.
The money came during the COVID-19 pandemic, after a doctor told Hagan’s wife that she should not work because of her rare lung condition. The Alabama Department of Labor now argues the unemployment support was a mistake.
“We pay taxes like everybody else,” said Hagan, 54. “Why shouldn’t we receive some benefit here and protect my wife with her life?”
Each year since the pandemic, the Hagans believed everything was on track to fix their situation. He said they’ve gone through the online appeals process multiple times, and every time the department sends a notice of their 30 days to appeal 10 days before the deadline. Then they scramble to send in the required forms.
“I can’t tell you how many times we had to turn in the doctor’s information,” he said about the note his wife’s doctor wrote about her condition. “There’s no clear communication. I don’t know what’s going on. We don’t hear anything for six months or a year, and all of a sudden, we’ve got to go back through it again. It’s like, ‘Golly, how many times do we have to do this?’”
He said he was recently told the state was going to demand even more of the money paid to his wife during the pandemic.
Burdens, not benefits
Ann Jones, 59, went through an unemployment quagmire during COVID-19. She said the department started paying her for losing one job, and then shortly demanded the money back.
Jones said the state demanded $3,000 back and she appealed. But she hadn’t had a hearing yet when the department awarded her unemployment for losing a second job. Then the state withheld her checks to pay back what it said she already owed.
“I’m expecting to get $200 in my account, direct deposit, and I look in my direct deposit and there’s $5.”
Jones said it felt callous. She received no warning or communication that she would not get the funds. With only a few dollars a week of unemployment assistance, Jones, who is now the director of marketing for a Christian academy in Marion, relied on her friends and family to support her during her time out of work.
“Before I could even make it through the appeal process, they started taking from the only income that I had, that was unemployment,” she said.
Jones sought help from the nonprofit Legal Services Alabama. The group requested a waiver from the department for her first overpayment. The state began offering some waivers for overpayments in 2022 after Gov. Kay Ivey spoke out, calling the backlog at the department ‘outrageous’ following reports from AL.com
The department is now embroiled in a lawsuit about the delays and confusion that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which will decide whether Alabama is immune from such a lawsuit. Oral arguments will be held in October and the court is expected to rule in the first half of next year.
“Our Hearings & Appeals Division is working to reduce wait times by consolidating processes, working to remove unnecessarily filed appeals, and by looking for innovative ways to provide service in the most efficient manner possible,” said department spokesperson Tara Hutchinson in a message to AL.com for this story.
Ongoing court battles have done little to give relief to many Alabamians who are thousands of dollars in debt because they got the help they were initially deemed eligible for during the pandemic.
How many people are affected exactly? It’s impossible to say. The Alabama Department of Labor declined to release data on how much money it has demanded back and how much it has forgiven in waivers, citing the ongoing lawsuit.
Larry Gardella, an attorney for Legal Services Alabama, which brought the lawsuit that is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, said the state has started giving some individual waivers for the alleged overpayments in federal money, but opted not to offer blanket forgiveness as seen in some other states.
“I have clients who got decisions on waiver right away. I have clients who’ve been waiting months for a decision on waiver applications,” he said.
Despite having legal help, Jones was not able to get anything resolved.
She happened to see the Alabama Department of Labor Secretary Fitzgerald Washington speak at an event after the pandemic about how much the department accomplished during COVID-19. She joked about how angry the experience made her.
“If he was outside of my backyard now, I probably wouldn’t even go out there to give him a glass of water,” she said. “I can kind of chuckle about it a little bit now,” she said of navigating the process, “it was awful to go through.”
Logjam lasts years
Elizabeth Rice is a single mother in Birmingham who said she got a notice in 2021 that she was overpaid $8,000 for a period when she was furloughed during the pandemic.
“I called them and asked them, what is this? I’m confused. And they said it’s, ‘Oh, it’s because you weren’t available to work.’ And I was like, ‘No, my company furloughed me.’ And they were like, ‘Well, that’s not what you said.’”
She said her overpayment notice arrived after the appeal deadline. She called the department and managed to get an appeal hearing scheduled but then did not hear about it for eight months. She said she called to check in, and the department said they were really behind and would get back to her eventually.
Two years later, Rice had a hearing, which she missed. She said she did not receive a notice about the hearing. She said it’s possible that the department wrote to her at an old address. Her appeal has been denied because she missed the hearing. Rice tried calling attorneys, but she said she couldn’t find anyone willing to take her case.
She also said she is not paying the money back because she does not believe she should have to, but the department has been taking her tax returns as repayment.
“It almost feels like Alabama is just saying, ‘Yeah, we regret paying that money. Even if you did qualify for it, we don’t care. We just want you to give it back.’ That’s what it feels like. It feels like they’re just hoping that people don’t fight it so that they can get their money back.”
Newly unemployed can’t get through
While the problems began during lockdown in 2020, the state still struggles with new cases today.
Sami Kern, 50, was a marketing manager for a defense contractor before she got laid off in December. She and her husband, a chef, and their two teenagers, moved to Alabama from California for a lower cost of living and better schools.
They knew they could not afford a house in California, she said, but Alabama hasn’t been an easy place to live either. She said her husband has been laid off twice since they got here, and for months, when they were both unemployed, she could not get through to the labor department to get information on the status of her benefits application.
“I guess I got put on their ‘do not call list’ or something. I don’t know what I did. They’re like, ‘Oh, that silly woman again,’” she speculated.
She said an employee asked her to verify some of her vacation pay, which she did, and then told her the unemployment was released. Kern heard nothing for two months and called again. They said the previous case agent was wrong, she recalled, and they still needed her vacation pay verified.
She said her family fell behind on bills, and they risked repossession of their cars.
Kern reached out to her local state representatives, Gov, Ivey’s office, anyone who might help. Eventually, after four months, she said, her money arrived in her account in a lump sum.
“The worst part of it was the feeling that all of these politicians say that they’re so interested in helping Alabama families,” she said. “We didn’t feel it. We felt the other way around. They didn’t care about us.”
